SURPRISE? NO SURPRISES IN WIKILEAKS AT ALL.
These are common diplomatic cables, written in the common business-language-of-state.
Anything ‘shocking’ is simply the result of how people speak when they believe that their communications will remain private. Look at your own email, or personal conversations. We all trash-talk whenever we can. It vents our frustrations.
For example: Everyone knows that Berscolini is a vain and incompetent man. But he’s a politician in Italy.
Putin? We’ve all known Putin’s ambitions and position for years. Is confirmation something we needed?
There is nothing so far in these docs that hasn’t been discussed to death.
The docs only give legitimacy to those previously debated topics.
*** Fools will always find a source of conspiracy in the natural incompetence of bureaucracy. ***
WHAT WE LEARNED:
There are only three things to learn from these docs:
[callout]There is no competent leadership in washington, and it is possible that there cannot be competent leadership, that can develop a consistent policy across that divergent a set of interests.[/callout]
1) The people who work on these communications are simple white collar government clerical bureaucrats, covering the communications of a vast and diverse state department, running a large naval empire during a time of enormous economic and political power changes.
2) The state department bureaucracy is too big, and american political and military reach is larger than the competence of the individuals in the State Department can coordinate — which is true of all bureaucracies.
3) There is no competent leadership in washington, and it is possible that there cannot be competent leadership, that can develop a consistent policy across that divergent a set of interests.
HOWEVER
The solutions to most of these diplomatic issues has been covered by Huntington in the Clash Of Civilizations. That is the only policy document necessary to coordinate the vast national interests abroad. We need a strong russia. We need a non-nuclear iran. Islam needs a different core state. We need to help south american, asian, hindu and the vast, ignorant, poor islamic states come into power, while we gracefully reduce our scope of responsibilities.
